Canadian sggc Le Groupe Conseil K2 sent me a complimentary copy of their game, Quest Adventure Cards, for review.

The game is a “ccg” sold in 6 different unmarked packs; that is, when you buy a pack of cards, you get one of the 6 packs, you just don’t know which one you’ll get. You can buy three random packs from their site (strangely, you must click on “News”, not “Sales” to do this) for $15 in Canada, or more elsewhere.

You need 3 packs of cards per player. The maximum suggested number of players is 4. Each player starts with 3 cards in hand.

Cards

There are 3 types of cards:

Quest: These are kept in a separate deck at the top of the playing field. 2 quests are face up at any time.

A quest card lists 2 or 3 required items; once you have these items in play, you have “completed” the quest. The quest card also lists optional additional items that you can have in play and that will be added to your completed quest, if you complete the quest.

When you “complete” a quest, take the quest card and place it on top of all the cards in your playing area that you used to complete the quest (required and optional). These cards are now locked-in points (cannot be affected by actions). Another quest card is flipped up to replace the one taken.

The remaining cards form the draw deck:

Action: Play the card, do what the card says. You may play only 1 action on your turn.

Item: An item card required to complete a quest. Play it into your play area on your turn. These cards are analogous to the cards required to complete the goal in Fluxx. Items cards have values from 2 to 8, which are their point values when they are in play on within your completed quests. There are duplicate items and alternate versions of certain items.

Play

Draw 2 cards, play up to 3 cards, discard down to 5 cards.

You may play only 1 action card on your turn. When you play a card, you may:

Put it into play, but only if it is listed as a required or optional item on one of the face up quests, and only if you don’t already have one of those items already in play.

Put it into your treasury. You may have any number of items in your treasury.

Take it from your treasury and put it into play, following the above rules.

You may ask yourself: why would I ever discard a card if I can always put cards into my treasury? Good question. I don’t know.

But here’s the weird thing about discarding: when you discard (spent actions are out of the game, not discarded) you discard to the middle of the deck. This rule is repeated more than once in the rules, so it must be important, but for the life of me, I still don’t get the point. Why? And what, exactly, is the middle of the deck, anyway?

Some action cards let you steal or swap cards from other players’ hands, play areas, or treasuries. The rules on some of these cards are unclear, which is to be expected from a self-published game by an sggc. Not a big deal, but something to clear up with an FAQ.

Game End

The game ends when a number of quests equal to 2 x the number of players have been scored. At that point, add up all your points in play, including all point in your collected quests. High total wins.

However, and this is a big however, if the draw deck runs out before the required number of quests is completed, the game ends in a tie. So, if you’re losing, and the draw deck is running out, your job is to prevent anyone (including yourself) from finishing the last quest.

Rules

The review copy I received was six packs of cards, one of each set. No rules were included, but these are available online. The online rules are long and a somewhat stilted translation from the Canadian French, but they are sufficient to understand the play. An online demo is also available, also very long but clear and thorough.

Components

After looking at the cards, I asked the publisher if I had received final quality cards or some demo copy; they assured me that I had received an actual published copy. Too bad. The card quality is flimsy, which is bad enough. What is worse is that they weren’t cut properly at the printers, and some of the cards had jagged serrations on the bottom edges; unplayable other than for demo purposes, really.

The artwork is nice enough.

Review

This is not a gamers’ game. I played twice, and didn’t experience a moment of interest at any time. I suppose there may be some decision making, but the decisions were brutally obvious. If you have items that match a quest, you play them. If not, you dump them in your treasury. If you have an action card that might do some good, do that first. That’s it. The game played me, nearly entirely. You simply waited to draw the items you needed.

The publisher suggested that the game was enjoyed mostly by kids aged 8 to 13; I expect that kids in that age group will enjoy the game, but I can’t see a kid actually loving the game. Not enough happens; it’s mostly looking back and forth between the little text printed on the quest card and the various names and categories printed on the item cards in your hand and treasury to see if you have a match.

And I really disliked the game ending in a tie if you don’t complete the quests, which happens, I expect, all too often.